Quickstart
Wandora application is lauched double clicking Wandora.exe. Alternative launch method is to run bat scripts in bin folder. Actually Wandora.exe simply runs bin/wandora.bat without a shell window. On Linux and similar environments (i.e. Mac) use the Wandora.sh shell script in the bin folder.
After you have launched Wandora application you should see initial Wandora window with six different GUI areas of Button bar, Topic tree, Finder, Layer stack, Topic panel and Info fields. Window also has menu bar that contains most of the Wandora's tools.
Button Bar
Button bar at the top of the window contains Open and arrow buttons. Arrow buttons behave like WWW browser's back and forward except that history contains topics. Back button recalls previous topic in the Topic panel and right button restores next topic in the history. If there is no topic in the history to restore the arrow button is disabled. Right clicking the arrow button reveals context menu of history topics. Selecting a topic in menu opens the topic in Topic panel.
Button bar contains also Open button. Button opens a Select topic window with Topics and Select tabs used to specify the topic to be opened. Topics tab contains topic tree. To open a topic with topic tree, find and select the topic and click OK. Select tab contains simple search fields to locate a topic with topic's subject identifier, subject locator or basename. To open a topic with the select tab, enter topic's identifier into the search field, press find, and click OK if search result field indicates successful match. Unfortunately you can't use wild cards or other advanced match operations within the search field of Select topic window.
Select topic window is very common GUI element in Wandora. It is generally used to request a topic. For example adding a class topic tool requests the class topic with Select topic window.
Topic Tree
Topic tree is one of the most convenient and most used GUI element in Wandora. Topic tree is used to browse and select topics. Topic tree is similar to file and folder hierarchy but contains topics instead of files, and the arranging principle is based to topic relations.
When you open the application the Wandora window, there is a default topic tree in top-left corner. Tree's root node is Wandora class and there is only one branch below. By default topics are arranged in the tree along type-of and super-sub-class relation. The "hollow triangle" icon represents super-sub-class relation between topics. "Filled rectangle" icon represents type-of relation between topics.
Clicking the handle in front of the topic icon and name opens subtree of the topic. Double clicking a topic in the tree opens the topic into the topic panel. Right clicking a topic in the topic tree reveals a context menu with a large number of topic tools.
Finder
Although topic tree offers very efficient method to browse and select topics there may be alone topics and separate topic islands in the topic map that can not be reached with the topic tree. Finder offers more fuzzy manner to find topics. Finder tab locates beside the Topics tab.
Finder is simply a free text search to the topic map. You may search with any topic element or element combination. Search result appears below the search field. Double clicking a topic in the search result opens the topic into the topic panel. Right clicking a topic opens context menu with a large number of topic tools.
Layer Stack
Layer stack GUI is below the topic tree and finder. Layer stack contains all topic maps open in Wandora. Wandora allows you to open multiple topic maps at once. Layer stack keeps all topic maps separate and allows you to use the stack as a single topic map.
Initially layer stack contains only one layer with the predefined schema map called Base. You should be careful in adjusting the Base map. Especially deleting topics or subject identifiers in the Base may break the Wandora application.
You can add new layer to the stack right clicking the empty space within stack GUI and selecting New layer. New layer is created after you have selected the type of new layer and entered name for the layer. You may have to specify also other parameters such as database name depending on the type of new layer.
Only one of the layers in the stack is selected at once. Selected layer has darker color than non-selected layers. Layer is selected by clicking the layer name with left mouse button. All "write" operations to the stack are targeted to the selected layer only. You should check the selected layer when modifying topics or associations.
You may also hide and lock layers. In front of the layer name there exists eye and lock symbols. Clicking the eye symbol toggles visibility of the layer. Clicking the lock symbol toggles layer lock. If layer is invisible all the topics and associations in the layer are not visible. If layer is locked all changes to topics and associations in that layer are blocked and generate errors.
Topic Panel
Topic panel covers the right column of Wandora window. Topic panel is a GUI area where topics are shown in more detail. Current version of Wandora (August 2007) has three different topic panel types called Traditional topic panel, Tabbed topic panel, and Graph topic panel. Initially topic is viewed with Traditional topic panel.
Traditional topic panel collects and shows the internal structure of topic:
- Basename
- Subject locator
- Variant names
- Classes
- Text data (Occurrences)
- Associations (where player or role)
- Associations where type
- Subject identifiers
- Instances
Topic panel contains edit fields for basename, subject locator and variant names. Classes, instances, text datas and associations are edited with tools found in context menus. To open class, instance or association player topic double click table cell with topic's base name. Tabbed topic panel is similar to traditional topic panel but views internal topic structures in separate tabs. Separating topic structures may be visually little easier compared to single large page of traditional topic panel. Graph topic panel is used to view topic map graphs. Each graph node represents topic and edge single association (or instance-of relation).
Info Fields
Last but not least bottom of the Wandora window contains a field strip with useful information about the open topic. The leftmost information snippet is a base name of the current open topic. Second field contains layer distribution vector of the current topic. Layer distribution vector indicates how the inspected topic merge between different layers. Third field contains name of the current layer.
To get more familiar with Wandora you might want to see available documentation now.
